Throughout IDFA DocLab’s fifteen-year history, it has become increasingly clear that there are countless examples of experimental documentary processes and techniques that end up in the mainstream months or years later. To begin tracking this, as part of our research partnership with IDFA DocLab, the MIT Open Documentary Lab conducted audience research at the DocLab’s November 2022 exhibition to test our hypothesis that documentarians and artists are prototyping the future of media.
For our research, we wanted to know:
To obtain a broad overview of the field, we selected ten projects that represented different technologies, techniques, disciplines and geographies. We interviewed the ten project artists before and after the festival and surveyed audiences during the festival. Our pre-interviews with the artists were geared towards understanding their intent and what techniques they were experimenting with, while after the festival we wanted to hear their observations and reflections. We surveyed the audiences to understand who they were (in terms of experience and demographics) and how they responded to the experimentation. By testing their reactions, we could see what resonated with audiences and therefore what techniques might be widely adopted.
We conducted 166 surveys during the festival – including 31 in-person interviews, 22 paper surveys, and 113 online surveys. Additionally we conducted 10 pre-festival interviews with the artists, 4 during the festival, and 10 post-festival interviews as well as one curatorial interview.
The ten selected projects are:
Alone Together by Dustin Harvey
Butterfly Effect by Mathilde Renault
Dancing with Dead Animals by Maartin Isaäk de Heer
Ghana Airways by Hakeem Adam
In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats by Darren Emerson
Kristine is Not Well by Seeyam Quine
Okawari by Landia Egal and Amaury Laburthe
Plastisapiens by Edith Jorisch and Mira Checkhanovich
Slumberland by Emma Bexell Stanisic, Stefan Bexell Stanisic and Robin Jonsson
Social Bouquet by Constant Dullaart
By conducting this research, we gained key insights into how media, and documentary in particular, are evolving. We identified the potentials and the challenges that these projects contain in carrying out the mission of documentary, in reflecting the future of how we create and consume media, and in revealing new knowledge of the world around us. If we highlight and support the work happening in the margins where artists and audiences are designing alternative and inclusive futures, there is hope for a better world.
You can find the report including key takeaways here.